I had mapped my first mass path a little over two years ago and made a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyxYRqNG6aI. I’m revisiting the topic now for reasons I will get into.

What is a mass path?

In Ireland, mass paths are either footpaths people used to walk to church or - more often - to school (because the school tended to be very close to the church). Those mass paths are basically short cuts across fields and were used until the 1960s or thereabouts. The other type of mass path dates back to the times of the Penal Laws, when Catholics were forbidden to go to mass (and to school). They met at secret locations, mass rocks or mass pits, to celebrate mass. The went out of use with the end of the Penal Laws.

Why my re-awakened interest?

My local county council had wanted to start a project to record mass paths in the county, and I considered applying for it, but I could not meet their conditions (driver’s license, insurance). This was regrettable, because I could have assembled the perfect team, but it was not possible for us. However, thanks to determination and OpenData platforms like OSM and Wikimedia, it doesn’t mean we can’t record some of them.

Methodology

The first thing I did was look up “mass path” for the County of Kilkenny in the schools collection on duchas.ie. This is a collection of essays (for lack of a better word) from the 1930s collected in Irish schools about various topics including place names, trades and skills, lore and history etc. This was of course a time when people still used mass paths. I made a map on umap (http://u.osmfr.org/m/930410/) roughly locating the mass paths mentioned in the schools collection and giving sources. They often give a townland or parish, often also fieldnames which are impossible for us to locate now, because the field names are only being recorded now and have possibly changed names in the last 90 years. Luckily, not all of them have changed, so it was possible in some cases to locate the mass path. I also tried Owen O’Kelly’s “Place names of County Kilkenny” which was published about 30 years after the schools collection, but is about as useful with its references like “There was a mass path going through Maher’s Field”.

The county council proposal suggested to use the Kilkenny Field Names Project. Several problems with that: 1. It’s very difficult to find; the links on their website lead nowhere. 2. Once you find it (it’s a layer under Landscapes > Local Authority Surveys here https://heritagemaps.ie/WebApps/HeritageMaps/index.html), you’ll realise that you can’t search the data. I don’t know how one is supposed to find a field referring to a mass path or mass rock without a search function. You have to click through all the POIs and hope that you come across one. You also run into the problem that the field name might not be in English, but in Irish with the Ossory dialect applied, where the standard word for mass - aifreann - can be spelled Anglicised as “eye-shing”. Good luck with that. On OpenStreetMap, we can at least add name:etymology to obscure names like that and have the word “mass” in there somewhere. See this recorded example on OpenStreetMap: /way/808541979.

Of course, it helps to talk to older people who might have used the mass paths in their childhood. So, I approached my landlord, a farmer in his 70s. He didn’t use any mass path himself, but he remembers his grandfather telling him of using one, and remembered people walking another one. He also happens to have a collection of old, out of copyright maps where the mass paths are sometimes marked with “F.P.” for “foot path”. Happy days.

Recording of mass paths

Once I have some information about the mass path, I try to find it in real life and record it by photographing entry and exit points (stiles, if they still exist or just the location where they allegedly were). If it’s still accessible to walk, I’ll walk them, but that hasn’t been the case very often. I upload the photographs to Wikimedia into their own category named after the mass path. This is where I have to make up names for them, so it’s easier to tell them apart. Usually, there will be a field name or another landmark like a building or gate which can be used. If not, “[STARTING POINT] - [END POINT] Mass Path” will have to do. I also create wikidata entries for them which in turn I can use on OpenStreetMap, once I map them. I don’t think there is an agreed upon tagging scheme on wikidata for mass paths, but you can add name, description, coordinate location, country, located in administrative territory, image and Commons category as the main statements. I suppose it would also be good to record the end point which usually is the church.

For the mapping of mass paths, I’m going with a route relation, but I have to add a lifecycle prefix to route, in case they are no longer accessible, so they don’t get rendered on OSMAnd and waymarkedtrails.org. I also use lifecycle prefixes for the stiles, gates and paths, if they are no longer there/ disused. Of course, one would have to try to walk them all to be very precise between disused: and was:, but I usually use was:. The stiles and gates can of course get a wikimedia_commons tag, if they have been recorded previously. I use historic=mass_path on the relation, so they can be searched for as a category. Try the overpass-turbo query: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1yTM.

Work in progress

I have made two videos about the process:

which I hope will inspire other people to record them, and it can also serve as a demonstration about the methodology and perks of OpenData for local authorities.

Outlook

I’m hoping to get some more information about mass paths from further research and also, maybe, by people approaching me or other mappers with their local information. Our local history mapper group is holding an event for Heritage Week this week, a walk-in mapping clinic, because we figured that the people with the historical information aren’t as tech savvy as needed for mapping it.

I would like to see a map of mass paths, but I don’t have the skills to make one; I’m only good for data collection and happy enough about that. But I think that the waymarkedtrails.org code could probably be modified to be used for mass paths. If anyone is looking for a project - please be my guest.